Juice industry in damage control after health star rating changed to rank lower than diet cola

Fruit growers and processors say they are crushed by a decision to cut the health star rating (HSR) for 100-per-cent no-added-sugar juices from five stars to as low as two stars.

The decision came down to a vote at the Australian and New Zealand Ministerial Forum on Food Regulation, a group made up of state and territory ministers as part of its ongoing response to the five-year HSR review.

Food is rated from half-a-star to five stars depending on how its healthy and risk nutrients compare but the system has come in for criticism.

The Federal Government's aim in developing the ratings is to give shoppers an easy way to identify better choices of packaged and processed foods, something Agriculture Minister David Littleproud asserts is undermined by this decision.

"What I don't accept is the insanity of this decision, which really has no basis on nutritional value — it really just is mind-numbingly dumb," he said.

Last chance to improve the HSR

The forum's July communique revealed Mr Littleproud's initial push — to see 100-per-cent fresh fruit and vegetable juice with no added sugar receive an automatic HSR score of five stars — not supported and the review recommendations were maintained.

The Minister's last chance to improve the rating was Friday's meeting, when he put forward a proposal aiming for an automatic four HSR, a rating he said was supported by the Commonwealth and the farm industry.

"This was it, this was my second crack at it. I had a go in July and got rolled and then rolled again," Mr Littleproud said.

"It would appear that our bureaucrats are working off some other scientific sheet that what reality is."

Orange industry outrage

Citrus Australia chief executive Nathan Hancock said he was disappointed with the decision.

"It sends a really poor message to our consumers, who, let's face it, need to have more fruit and vegetables," he said.

"Being told that diet soda is better for them than a juice product, we think, is confusing.

"Ministers across the country were given the opportunity to review the information that we provided them on the health benefits of natural juices, and unfortunately states like Queensland let us down."

Mr Hancock said the forum had overlooked the nutritional benefits of drinking juices that cannot be gained from a manufactured product with artificial sweetener.

"The message that they've been giving us is that they want people to drink more water, because it's better for hydration, and they want to take sugar out of the diet," he said.

"Because diet soft drinks have artificial sugars, it elevates them above juices which have natural sugars."

Casualty of the war on sugar

Mr Hancock said the campaign against sugar was painting every type of sugar in a bad light.

"The desire to stamp sugar out of the consumers' diet has been misconstrued and taken off in a different direction," he said.

"There's so many other products consumers are eating these days, unwittingly eating sugar — it's added sugar, it's not naturally in the product."

Mr Hancock said although he was not sure in reality how many people used the HSR when selecting products, it was bound to have a knock-on effect.

"If you do use that system and you let it guide you in the choices that you make, then you're going to be given a bum steer here.

"The other effect is that producers will stop using the HSR system on their products.

"They don't have any faith in it, they don't trust it — it's sending a poor message to the consumer and I think we'll see businesses stop using it."

Producers remove rating

Major juice processors like Nippy's in South Australia are disappointed in the outcome and fear the new downgraded rating will have a significant impact on the industry.

Jeff Knispel, joint managing director of Nippy's group of companies, said the decision to rate Diet Coke higher than fresh juice was counterintuitive.

He believed a health star rating implied a full package of health benefits.

"If you take out all of the nutrients in how you score well in this rating system and focus on sugar, the question is then raised: 'Well, why are we calling it a health star rating?'

"If you are so insistent on the sugar focus, why don't you call it a sugar star rating, because to call it a health star rating is bordering on deceptive."

Nippy's companies in South Australia alone produce about 12.5 million litres of juice per year.

Mr Knispel said they now decided to remove the health star rating from their packaging to limit the negative impact on their products.

"As a company, we don't want to promote a negative message with anything we do with our packaging, so we will remove the logo.

"It's not good news for us, but we will just deal with it as best as we can."

Citrus SA chair Mark Doecke said the group feared it could be faced with less fresh fruit sales, impacting growers and processors.

"If you look at sugar only, of course the Diet Coke has got less sugar in it so it is going to get a higher rating, but it's a bit of a silly way of looking at a product," he said.

Risking food waste

Granite Belt Growers Association vice president Nathan Boronio said it certainly made him question the relevance of the HSR.

"I can't understand why they would want to encourage people to move away from fresh fruit juice."

He said he feared the worst outcome would see people shying away from fruit juice, reducing demand and resulting in fruit being wasted.

"We want to ensure that fruit wastage in this country is reduced; if you discourage people from drinking apple juice, we are going to have more apples being dumped."

Mr Hancock shares those fears and said he was worried about what would happen if juice was widely thought of as unhealthy.

"As an industry we can't afford to have that happen.

"There's a lot of pressure on growers to look at what variety of crop they grow — we might start to see this isn't a viable industry for them into the future, and we may see less and less orange juice produced in Australia."

https://www.msn.com/en-au/news/australia/juice-industry-in-damage-control-after-health-star-rating-changed-to-rank-lower-than-diet-cola/ar-BB1bqXwZ?ocid=msedgntp

Vegans 40% more likely to suffer a bone fracture

Vegans who forgo all foods derived from animals have a far higher risk of broken bones than people who eat meat and fish, a study has shown.

The findings, by Oxford University researchers, have raised concerns that a recent increase in the popularity of veganism will cause health problems unless adherents plan their diets. The NHS advises vegans to think carefully about how they obtain enough calcium, iron and vitamin B12.

The number of vegans in Britain more than doubled to 600,000 between 2016 and 2019, according to surveys by the Vegan Society published this year. Food manufacturers have responded by creating scores of plant products designed to mimic red meat, such as vegan sausage rolls and burgers that “bleed” with beetroot juice.

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/news/vegans-40-more-likely-to-suffer-a-bone-fracture-rzb2bj06l

The Inuit can survive on an all-meat diet, but can you?

You might have seen celebrities endorsing meat-only diets, claiming it's cured them of chronic diseases and, of course, helped them stay lean.

To people who are tuned in to health research, these diets seem ... iffy.

They certainly go against the Australian dietary guidelines that prioritise fruit, vegetables and grain foods, and recommend limiting animal products to a couple of serves a day.

And for some people, eating meat or even any animal products is absolutely off the table for ethical or environmental reasons.

But let's say you did choose to follow an all-meat diet. Would it be possible to get everything you need from it? And how new is this idea really?

On paper, the carnivore diet looks OKish

The carnivore diet takes the low-carbohydrate approach of paleo, keto or Atkins to a new level, cutting out everything but animal products.

There are variations: some people eat only beef, some eat a wider variety of meat, and whether cheese and butter are on the menu also varies between followers.

But if we approach the question from strictly a health perspective, is it even possible to get all the nutrients your body needs from only animal products?

The answer is yes, or pretty close to it, says Veronique Chachay, a nutrition scientist from the University of Queensland.

She put versions of a carnivorous diet through dietary composition analysis software and found that, depending on the particular mix of animal foods included, pretty much all the necessary vitamins and minerals were accounted for.

"From purely a micronutrient point of view, we can't say people cannot meet their requirements," Dr Chachay says.

Ticking the boxes on nutrients is only part of the story. We know that fibre is important for digestive health and fostering a diversity of health-promoting gut bacteria — and fibre is notably absent in carnivorous diets.

So experts are keen to know more about the science of why some people report feeling good on such diets, even after following them for a long time.

But we don't know much about the long-term impacts of this diet, and scientists are calling for more research.

Lessons from the Inuit diet

The Inuit — First Nations people from northern North America — have a traditional diet made up almost exclusively from animal products.

They're often held up as evidence that a carnivorous diet can be healthy. So what does the Inuit diet actually look like?

Researchers in 2004 conducted surveys in 18 Indigenous communities in Canada where people followed the traditional diet, or pretty close to it.

They found community members ate well over a kilogram a day of animal products, and between 28 and 160 grams a day of plant foods.

The research shows it is possible to thrive on a very animal-heavy diet, says Clare Collins, a professor of nutrition and dietetics at the University of Newcastle.

"[The Inuit people] had a really low carbohydrate intake, a really low vegetable intake on their traditional diet, and they ate some stuff that we wouldn't eat, for example, they ate the organs of a lot of animals, they ate a heck of a lot of seafood, and they ate some of their meat raw, which is actually higher in vitamin C," she says.

"With some of those nutrients, because they ate a lot of those foods, they could meet their requirements."

But Inuit people aren't particularly long-lived. And while the factors that affect life expectancy are hard to tease out, especially when studying First Nations people during modern times, Professor Collins says big drivers do come from diet.

"Life expectancy is not high and they have very high rates of some cancers. It's partly attributable to their genetics. And that's exacerbated by a really high salted, smoked food diet."

In contrast, the traditional diets of the longest-lived peoples in the world have very high vegetable intake, she points out.

But whichever traditional diet you look at: "They're all less refined foods," Professor Collins says.

"And that's the big thing that people don't really want to want to look at."

The myth of the one optimal diet

As with many fad diets, proponents of the carnivore diet often hold it up as the ideal way to eat.

And that's simply not true, Dr Chachay says, because there is no one optimal diet.

We humans are similar to each other, but we're not clones. We have genetic differences. And just like some humans can digest the lactose in milk and others can't, it could be there are other differences that explain why some people report that they thrive on a carnivorous diet.

Dr Chachay's research deals in part with the potential for personalised diets based on an individual's unique genetic makeup, and even the makeup of their microbiome. We're not there yet, but she hopes to see it begin to happen in the near future.

"We will be able to tailor diets and ideal ratios of the micronutrients that would fit with the optimal health for the individual."

And, while the evidence around carnivore diets is sparse, she suspects it may be the case that for some individuals, it works for their bodies.

"What I'm interested in knowing is, these people that practise it, obviously they didn't die after a year. They didn't lose their hair. They didn't start to become completely crazy. They are functioning," she says.

"There's going to be some mechanism behind the scene."

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-10-22/diet-only-meat-carnivore-traditional-diets-health/12772188

Smog-infested Delhi slum that may show link between pollution and Covid-19 levels

It's an obvious conclusion to blame the illness on pollution but it may not be so.  The polluted areas are also ones where poor people live and we already know that poor people have worse health.  

But a distinction could be drawn between low levels of pollution and the extraordinary levels in Delhi.  The body can cope with low level polution but very high levels may overwhelm its coping measures.

So the point is that the respiratory illness noted below may be specific to levels of polution found in the Third world only.  Extrapolating it to the developed world would be adventurous


During the winter months, it’s hard to tell whether the sun rises at all in the New Delhi neighbourhood of Sukhdev Vihar.

Enveloped in a thick layer of impenetrable smog, the natural light is blocked out and a gloomy shadow hangs over the hundreds of high-rise residential flats.

Breathing the air outside triggers waves of nausea and a throbbing headache, while walking up a flight of stairs leaves people breathless.

The sprawling megacity of New Delhi, home to approximately 30 million people, is the most polluted capital in the world.

Earlier this month, the Air Quality Index (AQI) - which measures the level of pollutants - exceeded 1,300 in Sukhdev Vihar, over thirty times the safe level set by the World Health Organization.

The level of pollution in New Delhi is hazardous all year, thanks to largely unregulated industrial and vehicular emissions, but it peaks during the winter months when thousands of farmers in surrounding states burn crop stubble to fertilise their soil.

As the pollution levels soared in the city in November the number of daily Covid-19 cases also rose, doubling to more than 7,000.

This bucked the national trend, with India as a whole seeing half the number of new daily infections halving from its September peak.

Public health experts are still exploring the link between Covid-19 and air pollution but initial reports indicate a strong correlation.

A Harvard University study of 3,000 districts in the United States found that areas witnessing small increases in pollutants also had a large uptick in Covid-19 fatalities.

In late October, a second study by a group of German researchers found 15 percent of global deaths from the virus could be attributed to long-term exposure to air pollution.

There has been both a 70 percent increase in the number of Covid-19 patients and also far more cases where patients have severe symptoms since pollution began to surge in New Delhi, according to Dr Sumit Ray, a critical care doctor at Holy Family Hospital in Sukhdev Vihar.

“The direct effect is on the lungs, prolonged exposure to pollutants makes your airwaves hyper-reactive and they go into constriction, then reacting badly to any infection,” explains Dr Ray.

“Long-term exposure to air pollution causes damages to the air sacs themselves and if someone gets a respiratory infection it becomes much more difficult to fight it off because they already have lung damage.”

The Covid-19 fatality rate in Holy Family Hospital has increased from 3.3 per cent between June and September to 5.05 percent since October 1.

Air pollution can also cause underlying health problems such as heart disease, which in turn can cause the fatality rate from Covid-19 to soar.

A three-month study from the virus epicentre in Wuhan found Covid-19 patients with heart disease had a fatality rate of 16.7 percent, compared to four percent for those without.

The record-breaking pollution levels in Sukhdev Vihar are exacerbated by a waste-to-energy plant that pumps out toxic gasses every evening.

“I receive a lot of patients with breathing difficulties, especially in October and November” explains Dr M. Rehman, who runs a clinic in the neighbourhood.

“Many inhabitants are asthmatics and are forced to use inhalers, even the younger generation, and I have seen many people die of pulmonary disorders.”

Despite growing public outrage the Delhi Government has failed to make any dent in lowering pollution levels.

Politicians are cautious to limit industrial growth and attempts to curb stubble burning have failed in surrounding states, with the practice so entrenched.

https://kaleistyleguide.com/news/2020/11/22/dispatch-inside-smog-infested-delhi-slum-may-prove-link-pollution/

The Corn Oil Controversy: Are Polyunsaturated Fats Bad For Us?

Rummage around the fringes of nutrition “science” for a while and you’ll soon bump into a strongly held belief that the vegetable oils most of us consider a healthier option—like canola, soy, corn, safflower, peanut and soy oils—will actually lead to your grizzly (drizzly?) demise, usually via the route of obesity, heart disease and diabetes.

Detractors lump these vegetable oils into the bracket “industrial seed oils,” with hashtags such as #vegoilsucks or #fakefats, and emotionally charged narrative around the “chemicals” used to extract and refine them (in fact, refining to remove free fatty acids, gums and other impurities makes vegetable oils less likely to smoke and oxidize and thereby potentially safer for human health).

For the most part, it’s proponents of the paleo and other “ancestral” diets who promote the theory that seed oils are bad for us. The paleo diet postulates that the only healthy foods are those that were around during the Paleolithic era—which obviously doesn’t extend to a bottle of vegetable oil for your stir fry or salad. But the half-baked theory completely overlooks that subsequent evolutionary changes have allowed us to adapt to a more industrialized diet.

There’s another reason the seed-oils-are-death brigade give for ditching vegetable oils that is more cited than any: their high content of polyunsaturated fats. The irrational hatred runs alongside a conspiracy theory that the American Heart Association, who have always promoted vegetable oils over animal fat, grew their profile based on funding from Proctor and Gamble, makers of the first 100% vegetable oil brand, Crisco.

So, what does science actually say about polyunsaturates, and their effect on health?

The Sydney Diet Heart Study

Much of the backlash against polyunsaturated fats centers around a retrospective data dredge of a study conducted in Sydney, Australia. The original 1970s study involved men aged 30-59 with coronary heart disease who ate either a safflower oil-supplemented diet where 9.8% of calories came from saturated fatty acids and 15.1% from polyunsaturated fatty acids (mostly linoleic acid), or one where saturates contributed 13.5% and polyunsaturates 8.9% of total calories. Survival, measured at the time only in terms of all-cause mortality, was slightly better in the group that ate more saturated fats (typically found in meat and dairy), though multivariate analysis showed that none of the dietary factors were significantly related to survival.

The 2013 re-analysis showed that men with a high intake of safflower oil had a statistically higher risk of dying from a second cardiac event, even though their cholesterol levels fell.

However, in the context of now, these results are of little concern, given nobody recommends linoleic acid intake being as high as in the treatment arm of this decades-old study anymore. The current US recommendations are for 5-10% of energy to be provided by linoleic acid, while actual intake comes in at around  6-7% according to dietary surveys.

For the men in the Sydney study, 70% of whom were smokers with already damaged arteries, piling excessive quantities of linoleic acid into them wasn’t a sensible thing to do in retrospect: we now know that when linoleic acid oxidizes, which it’s chemistry means it has a tendency to do, it creates potentially atherogenic metabolites. Perhaps even more relevant, is that the safflower oil was consumed in the form of margarine, which in the 1970s, was almost certainly likely to have been partially hydrogenated and therefore to contain trans fats, which have since been found to increase risk of heart disease.

The Minnesota Coronary Experiment

The Minnesota Coronary Experiment is also regularly used as evidence for rejecting vegetable oils and embracing animal fats.

The original randomized controlled trial tried but failed to show that replacing saturated fatty acids in the diet with linoleic acid from corn oil reduced coronary heart disease (CHD).

A 2016 reinvestigation, which unearthed and used new raw data, focused on a subgroup of 2355 of the original 9570 participants on whom blood cholesterol measurements were available. It confirmed no overall difference in all-cause mortality between groups, but also found that the greater the fall in blood cholesterol, the greater the risk of death.

However, despite the brouhaha that surrounded this study and the new data, it still didn’t uniquely incriminate polyunsaturates, as the noted association between a fall in blood cholesterol and a greater risk of death occurred both in the group eating a lot of corn oil and the control group. There’s also the confounding complication that illness can result in a fall in blood cholesterol.

More recent analysis lets linoleic acid off the hook

A big multinational review published last year in Circulation gives reason to be fairly relaxed about polyunsaturated fats. The individual-level pooled analysis of 30 cohort studies involved 15,198 cardiovascular events occurring among 68, 659 participants, with medians of follow-up ranging from 2 to nearly 32 years. The analysis showed higher levels of linoleic acid to be significantly associated with lower risks of total CVD, cardiovascular mortality, and ischemic stroke. Arachidonic acid levels—arachidonic acid is a metabolite of linoleic acid that has also come in for some stick as a potential driver of inflammation in arteries —were also not associated with a higher risk of cardiovascular events.

As you were — seed oils won’t kill you!

As unexciting as it is, current dietary advice— including from the American Heart Association—probably has it about right. That advice doesn’t promote large amounts of polyunsaturates anymore, but recommends a balance of monounsaturates and polyunsaturates, with the additional recommendation that polyunsaturates consumed should not be just the omega-6 variety (linoleic acid) but should also include omega-3s.

In terms of an everyday diet, that means consuming a mix of vegetable and olive oils—or if you were to just pick one, canola oil, as it has a good balance of monounsaturates, omega-6 polyunsaturates and some omega-3 polyunsaturates—as well as having 1–2 oily fish meals weekly. Other foods to include as a part of a heart-healthy portfolio of foods include more dietary fiber, less salt, more fruit and vegetables, along with modest alcohol.

The bottom line? “Seed oils” aren’t poison, nor are they the sole dietary answer to heart disease either. It’s 40 years since scientists flirted with this notion, and now it’s time to move on.

https://www.acsh.org/news/2020/08/17/corn-oil-controversy-are-polyunsaturated-fats-bad-us-14971

Vegans have TWICE as much sex as meat-eaters and are more adventurous in the bedroom, survey reveals

It should be noted that this finding is based on the statements of married people using a dating site to start affairs.  So the generalizability of the findings to the population at large is unknown.  

The findings are in any case probably the result of "faking good".  As very deviant people, vegans have a strong incentive to promote themselves as being superior people.  They would appear to have done that in their responses to this survey.

The findings are therefore unlikely to represent real-life even within the group concerned


Vegans have twice as much sex as meat-eaters and are more willing to experiment in the bedroom, according to a new survey.

Dating website IllicitEncounters.com found over half of the vegans asked claimed they have sex four times a week, while only half of meat-eaters reported having sex twice in the same time period.

The research found two thirds of vegans were prepared to experiment in the bedroom, while over half of the meat-eaters surveyed admitted they were less adventurous between the sheets, reports the Mirror.

The survey also suggested that vegans have a better time in the bedroom with 84 per cent saying they're satisfied with their sex life compared with a measly 59 per cent of those with a meat-based diet.

Meanwhile 35 per cent of those on a meat-based diet describe themselves as 'givers', compared to 58 per cent of vegans.     

Spokeswoman Jessica Leoni said: 'Vegans are masters of seduction it would appear. Our statistics don't lie and vegans eat foods known for their aphrodisiac qualities such as ginseng and aniseed.'

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-8950949/Vegans-TWICE-sex-meat-eaters-adventurous-bedroom-survey-reveals.html

'Super pea' could reduce risk of Type 2 diabetes, researchers find

A "super pea" should be added to flour to stave off diabetes, Imperial College London researchers have said, with a study finding that it helps prevent blood sugar spikes.

A type of wrinkled pea may help control blood sugar levels and could reduce the risk of Type 2 diabetes, a study published in the journal Nature Food suggests.

Scientists have said incorporating "super peas" into foods in the form of whole pea seeds or flour may help tackle the global Type 2 diabetes epidemic.

The research focused on a naturally occurring wrinkled pea which, while genetically identical to the regular smooth peas often found in supermarket frozen food aisles, contains higher amounts of so-called resistant starch due to a natural mutation.

"If peas were not harvested fresh for freezing, but allowed to mature on the plants, it is likely that many would develop into wrinkled seeds," said Dr Katerina Petropoulou, of the Centre for Translational and Nutrition Food Research at Imperial College London and first author of the research.

The body breaks down starch to release sugar but resistant starch is broken down more slowly, meaning sugar is released more slowly into the bloodstream. This results in a more stable increase rather than a "sugar spike" in which blood sugar levels rise sharply after a meal, researchers say.

The same effect was seen when consuming flour made from wrinkled peas incorporated in a mixed meal. Researchers suggested this could be important because frequent, large sugar spikes are thought to increase the risk of diabetes.

They added that flour from these peas could potentially be used in commonly consumed processed foods which, if eaten over the long term, could prevent these sugar spikes.

In the experiments, researchers at Imperial College London, the John Innes Centre, Quadram Institute Bioscience and the University of Glasgow compared the larger, mature wrinkled peas, which produced a lower overall carbohydrate content, with normal peas.

The team gave healthy volunteers a mixed meal including 50 grams of wrinkled peas, and in a series of control experiments gave them regular peas. They also added a tracer molecule to the peas, so they could track how they were absorbed and digested by the human gastrointestinal tract.

The experiments were repeated using flour made from wrinkled peas or regular peas.

To further investigate the impact of long-term consumption, they recruited 25 volunteers and asked them to consume pea hummus and mushy peas made from wrinkled or regular peas for a period of four weeks.

Previous research from the same group suggested that, as these bacteria ferment the starch, they produce compounds called short chain fatty acids. These compounds help boost the function of cells that produce insulin, which helps control blood sugar.

Further tests using a mimic of the human gut showed that the way in which the peas were prepared and cooked affected how quickly they were digested.

Dr Petropoulou said: "There is much evidence that diets rich in a type of carbohydrate called resistant starch have a positive impact on controlling blood glucose levels, and hence reduce susceptibility to Type 2 diabetes."

Professor Pete Wilde, of the Quadram Institute, said: "This study has shown us that, by preparing these peas in certain ways, we can further reduce blood sugar spikes, opening up new possibilities for making healthier foods using controlled food processing techniques."

The researchers are now planning further trials involving volunteers with early stage Type 2 diabetes.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/10/26/super-pea-could-reduce-risk-type-2-diabetes-researchers-find

Diet Coke could be just as bad for you as sugared one: Artificially sweetened drinks and sugary beverages BOTH increase the risk of heart disease by up to 20%

They were probably looking just at poverty.  Poor people drink a lot of fizz and are generally unhealthy.  So the health outcomes that they  found were probably a poverty effect rather than a sweetner effect.  They had no data on income so could not control for poverty

The study was "Sugary drink consumption and risk of cancer: results from NutriNet-Santé prospective cohort by Chazelas et al.

An additional concern about the study is that it was an internet study only -- with all the biases consequent on that.  Less sophisticated people would have been much under-represented in the study sample


French researchers tracked more than 104,000 people over ten years, looking at how many sugary or sugar-free soft drinks they consumed.

They found the consumers of both sugary and artificially sweetened drinks are up to  20 per cent more likely to suffer heart disease, stroke or heart attacks than those who avoid soft drinks.

The scientists, at Sorbonne University in Paris, split people into three groups based on their consumption of sweetened beverages.

These categories were labelled as non-consumers, low consumers and high consumers and drinks split into either artificially sweetened or sugary.

A sugar content equalling or exceeding five per cent meant it was considered sugary whereas a sub-five percentage and the presence of 'non-nutritive sweeteners' was enough to be classified as an artificially-sweetened beverage.  

The study required participants to fill in three daily diet diaries every six months.

A decade of records from 2009 to 2019 looked for any relationship between intake and heart-related issues, such as stroke, transient ischemic attack (TIA), myocardial infarction, acute coronary syndrome and angioplasty.

A study of more than 5,000 US-based couples found that in 79 per cent of relationships, both people fall into the 'non-ideal' category for heart health. On average, couples also share the same risk factors which can make events such as a stroke or heart attack more likely.  This is due to both people falling into an unhealthy routine with poor diet and inadequate levels of exercise.

It revealed people who drank lots of low-sugar diet drinks had the same elevated heart disease risk as those who drank the full-sugar versions.

People who are considered to be high consumers of either artificially sweetened or sugary drinks were 20 per cent as likely to suffer heart problems than people who avoided both types of soft drinks, sticking to other options such as water, tea or coffee.

There was no difference between the two types of drink.  

Diet drinks such as Diet Coke, and the artificial sweeteners they contain, are often marketed as a way of reducing calorie and sugar intake.

But experts are concerned at growing evidence that artificial sweeteners alter the body's metabolism, increasing the speed at which sugar is absorbed.

Lead author Eloi Chazelas concluded: 'Higher intakes of sugary drinks and artificially sweetened beverages were associated with a higher risk of cardiovascular diseases, suggesting that artificial sweeteners might not be a healthy substitute for sugary drinks.'

'These data provide additional arguments to fuel the current debate on taxes, labeling, and regulation of sugary drinks and artificially sweetened beverages.'

'To establish a causal link, replication in other large-scale prospective cohorts and mechanistic investigations are needed.'

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-8881311/Drinking-diet-coke-just-bad-fat.html

How pink salt could be damaging your health

It is one of the trendiest items on health food and supermarket shelves, but some brands of pink salt have been found to contain toxic levels of lead and other harmful heavy metals.

The salt, which is promoted by health websites because it contains more minerals, sells for up to $10 a pack — three times the price of the white stuff which retails for as little as $3.

However an alarming study found the level of healthy minerals in the salt were so low you would need to eat six teaspoons of salt a day, six times as much as the World Health Organisation (WHO) says is healthy, to get any benefit.

And worse of all, pink salt could actually be harmful to your health.

Nutrition Research Australia tested 31 samples of pink salt and found one brand – Peruvian Pink Salt – contained so much lead it exceeded Food Standards Australia New Zealand’s (FSANZ) safe levels by 25 per cent and had 130 times more lead than white table salt.

According to US Food and Drug Administration guidelines “one teaspoon of Peruvian salt would be four times the daily limit of lead for a child,” researcher Flavia Fayet-Moore told News Corp.

There is no level of exposure to lead without harmful effects, she said. Young children, including unborn babies, are at greatest risk from lead exposure and it can permanently damage their brain and affect their intellectual development.

Symptoms of lead poisoning include muscle pains, fatigue, abdominal pains, headache nausea and vomiting, seizures and coma.

Other brands of pink salt were found to contain heavy metals that are dangerous if consumed long term. These included mercury, cadmium and aluminium.

Although these heavy metals were present in only tiny amounts they accumulate in the body as we age and can be toxic if consumed regularly, Ms Fayet-Moore said. “It could accumulate and result in adverse health effects,” she said.

Cadmium is stored in the liver and kidneys and is slowly excreted in urine but if it builds up it can affect the kidneys, lungs, and bones causing stomach irritation, abdominal cramps, nausea, vomiting and diarrhoea, headaches and flu-like symptoms.

Aluminium has been detected in the brain tissue of patients with Alzheimer’s disease and may reduce the rate of growth of brain cells.

“Our study shows that pink salt’s reputation for being ‘healthier’ has now been debunked, with the nutrient level too low and variable for it to be a consistent source of nutrients,” she said.

“While pink salt may look prettier on the dining room table, there are many healthy ways to enhance flavour and add colour to your meal, such as using herbs and spices like paprika, turmeric, cinnamon, saffron and even pink peppercorns,” she said.

The World Health Organisation says we should consume less than 5g or one teaspoon of salt per day but because it is in high levels in packaged foods, even sweet foods, most people consume 9-12 grams per day.

Foods with healthy salt levels contain less than 120mg of sodium per 100g.

https://www.couriermail.com.au/news/national/how-pink-salt-could-be-damaging-your-health/news-story/b5de23967a0baea207adb100d21767d8

'My vegan diet ruined my health'

A couple of years ago, veganism was booming. I was editing a glossy vegan food magazine and every day brought more plant-based product launches and glowing Instagram stars proffering raw Buddha bowls.

I, too, went vegan in the summer of 2016, aged 45. After years as a vegetarian with an abiding love for animals, it seemed ridiculous to keep eating eggs and dairy when alternatives made from soy, pea protein and lentils were suddenly available. I had constant access to health information and a cabinet rattling with supplements. What I didn't have, unfortunately, was any understanding of how veganism would affect my health.

Despite reading glowing reports from other vegans of how their energy had increased, I was tired for hours every day. My hair was dry and brittle. My gums bled, I caught colds and felt low much of the time.

It took two years of inexplicable skin rashes and pain before I was diagnosed with a severe nickel allergy - a mineral in abundant supply in soy, pulses, beans and wholegrains. My entire diet, effectively. I had no idea that nickel allergy existed, but the dietitian I was finally assigned told me that she was seeing increasing numbers of patients developing it after turning vegan.

Despite my moral reservations, the specialist told me that I had to stop being vegan. I braved a piece of fish, and was amazed by its deliciousness. I introduced prawns, salmon, tuna and mackerel to my diet, along with eggs and cheese.

Within a few days, my low mood lifted and my energy returned. I felt like taking long walks again, and over the months my hair was thicker, and my skin less rash-prone, too. Most importantly, I slept better.

A few years into the vegan revolution, it seems, the uneaten chickens are coming home to roost.

Increasingly, dietitians and GPs are expressing concern that in the stampede to save the planet, we may be risking our wellbeing. Last week, it was reported that Cheltenham Ladies' College in the UK has taken the unprecedented step of giving regular blood tests to newly vegan pupils to maintain health and prevent eating disorders such as anorexia, often linked to highly restrictive diets.

And though many advocates remain healthy, others, like me, are admitting defeat. Singer Miley Cyrus recently revealed that she'd reverted to a less restricted diet. "I've had to introduce fish and omegas into my life because my brain wasn't functioning properly," she said. Despite following "the strictest [vegan diet] you've ever known" for six years, other health issues reared up, including hip pain and a feeling of malnourishment. She reluctantly gave in and ate fish after suffering agonising kidney stones from excess oxalates, found in beans and spinach.

Actor Anne Hathaway has also spoken about her change of heart after going vegan - she "just didn't feel good or healthy". Dietitian Jane Clarke accepts that cutting down on meat can be beneficial, but is concerned by veganism's wholesale promotion by bloggers, rather than health experts.

"It's great that there is now a much wider range of non-meat sources of protein, but the power of social media and supermarkets to influence our food choices needs to be combined with scientific evidence," she warns, adding that the trend for highly processed vegan food with lots of sugar, fats and salt added shows "you can easily be unhealthy as a vegan".

She says the evidence still points to the health benefits of a balanced diet - including a limited amount of animal protein and dairy. Research recently published in the journal BMC Medicine found the lowest mortality rates in those eating up to 80g of meat a day.

"Calcium-rich foods including cow's milk are proven to be beneficial to bone health and help produce anticancer substances such as butyrate. The fact is, meat is a great source of easily accessible protein."

GP Noreen Nguru, the founder of whatthedoctorrecommends.com, says deficiencies of nutrients and vitamins are "common among new and even established vegans, and include micronutrients deficiencies in vitamin D, calcium, omega-3 fatty acids and zinc - all responsible for building strong immune systems and protecting against bone fractures, high blood pressure and fatigue.

"Vegans are also at a much higher risk of developing a vitamin-B12 deficiency which, if left untreated for too long, can potentially cause irreversible neurological effects such as paresthesia (numbness or tingling in the hands and feet), co-ordination difficulties and even problems with memory."

Such deficiencies can be prevented with careful supplementation, but some argue that nutrients and vitamins can be harder for the body to absorb this way. In one Oxford University study published in 2010, half the vegans in the sample were B12 deficient.

"The implications of diving into a meat-free, egg-free and dairy-free diet without adequate preparation and research are likely to bring more harm than good," says Dr Nguru. And though she agrees that meat and dairy consumption have been linked to problems such as bowel cancer, "there are several less restrictive diets that offer heart-protective benefits and reduce the risk of cancer, such as low carb and Mediterranean diets rich in omega 3 and good fats".

Life coach Bianca Riemer, 41, went vegan in 2011, having been largely vegetarian. Despite taking all the recommended supplements, including omegas and B12, she kept craving lamb and chicken.

Though she initially felt better, "my energy was still very depleted and my acupuncturist suggested I should eat eggs and meat again. I added salmon, and then I got pregnant after two years of trying. I also started eating chicken and felt so much better for it."

After returning to meat, "the impact on my mental and physical wellbeing was close to immediate. But I don't think there's a one-diet-fits-all approach," she goes on. "Each of us should eat whatever suits us at different stages of life."

In Australia, 12 per cent of the population eat a mostly vegetarian diet. While in the UK, it's closer to 7 per cent and 4 per cent are, like me, pescatarian; between 1 and 2 per cent are vegan.

Many ex-vegans find vegetarianism a more successful refuge.

Sophia Husbands had a failed attempt at veganism in 2018. "I did Veganuary for my health," says Husbands, 41, founder of wellbeing site LoveHappyBody, "but I started to get run down and developed mouth ulcers in just a month. I felt dizzy and it turned out my iron levels were very low."

Last year she went vegetarian, and says she's found the diet much more sustainable. "I've lost weight, my skin has improved. But I try to keep a balance now, and I'm wary of totally eliminating anything, as I think that can spark intolerances. If I craved meat or fish, I would return to it."

https://www.smh.com.au/lifestyle/health-and-wellness/my-vegan-diet-ruined-my-health-20201013-p564s5.html

Fluoride Fear Makes a Comeback

“Have you never wondered why I drink only distilled water, or rainwater, and only pure-grain alcohol? Have you ever heard of a thing called fluoridation of water? Do you realize that fluoridation is the most monstrously conceived and dangerous Communist plot we have ever had to face?”

That was Gen. Jack Ripper (Sterling Hayden) to Capt. Lionel Mandrake (Peter Sellers) in the 1963 Cold War send-up Dr. Strangelove. Gen. Ripper is so concerned about his precious bodily fluids that he launches an attack on the Soviet Union. Such an attack never occurred, but conspiracy theories did indeed swirl around fluoridation. A re-run of sorts is now occurring courtesy of York University (Toronto) neuropsychologist Christine Till, author of a study that links fluoride in drinking water to lower intelligence in children.

The Journal of the American Medical Association notes that it subjected the study to added scrutiny and peer review, but experts from six countries are taking aim at Till. Harvard dental professor Myron Allukian Jr., former president of the American Public Health Association, charges that Till is “misleading the public and others by distorting the data and not doing the proper analyses.” In similar style, a report by Canada’s independent health agency claims Till’s conclusions were “not supported by the data” and Till was reluctant to hand it over. According to McGill University chemistry professor Joe Schwarcz, “Whoever owns the data should be willing to release it.”

Fluoridation of drinking water to prevent tooth decay began in the 1940s, and as Jesse Hicks notes at Science History, anti-fluoridation literature goes back more than half a century. Critics claim fluoride is linked to cancer, diminished intelligence, and birth defects, among other serious concerns. Christine Till has also linked fluoridated water with ADHD, and her new work provides some takeaways.

When it comes to medical science, peer review is not enough. Studies must be subject to replication by independent parties. When it comes to tooth decay, fluoridation is not the only factor, and other substances in water also raise cause for concern.

For example, in 2018, waters at the confluence of the Sacramento and American rivers were contaminated with E. coli bacteria, caused by fecal contamination. As KCRA reported, while only a small percentage of E. coli strands are harmful, “they can cause significant health problems.”

So if General Ripper were around today, he would have a lot more to worry about than just fluoride.

<a href="https://blog.independent.org/2020/10/01/fluoride-fear-stages-a-comeback/?omhide=true">SOURCE</a>  

Subway bread isn't bread, Irish court rules

London: Ireland's Supreme Court has ruled that bread sold by the fast-food chain Subway contains so much sugar that it cannot legally be defined as bread.

The ruling came in a tax dispute brought by Bookfinders Ltd, an Irish Subway franchisee, which argued that some of its takeaway products – including teas, coffees and heated sandwiches – were not liable for value-added tax.

A panel of judges rejected the appeal on Tuesday, ruling that the bread sold by Subway contains too much sugar to be categorised as a "staple food", which is not taxed.

"There is no dispute that the bread supplied by Subway in its heated sandwiches has a sugar content of 10 per cent of the weight of the flour included in the dough, and thus exceeds the 2 per cent specified," the judgment read.

The law makes a distinction between "bread as a staple food" and other baked goods "which are, or approach, confectionery or fancy baked goods", the judgment said.

Subway disagreed with the characterisation in a statement. "Subway's bread is, of course, bread," the company said in an email.

"We have been baking fresh bread in our restaurants for more than three decades and our guests return each day for sandwiches made on bread that smells as good as it tastes."

Bookfinders was appealing against a 2006 decision by authorities who refused to refund value-added tax payments. Lower courts had dismissed the case before it reached the Supreme Court.

Subway said it was reviewing the latest tax ruling. It added that the decision was based on an outdated bread exemption set by the Irish government that was updated in 2012.

https://www.smh.com.au/world/europe/subway-bread-isn-t-bread-irish-court-rules-20201002-p5618k.html

The Glorious Post-Brexit World Of Affordable Food

The European Union is warning us of the tragedy that will ensue as we leave the warm embrace of the federasts. That food will become more affordable upon this sceptered isle.

The UK will be flooded with cheaply produced food should it lower its regulatory standards after Brexit, Brussels has warned,

Well, yes, and this should be a warning for us why?

Given that the shouting about those food standards is to insist that we should be fed by peasants of good stock rather than industrial conglomerates who do it cheaply, why should we stick with the condemning people to the idiocies of rural life? Better, by far, to let the corporations take the strain, no?

Do note the important thing here. The relaxing of the standards doesn’t prevent anyone who wants to continue to purchase from rosy cheeked yokels. The imposition of the standards does stop the poor gaining a cheap chicken dinner. So, concerned with liberty as we are, even with the feeding habits of the poor, we should be against the regulations in the first place, right?

All of which is most fun and yet still not quite grasping the actual point here. The European Union exists – we can tell this from where it spends its budget – in order to benefit the owners of the countryside, the landlords. Brexit gives us the opportunity to give said landlords the right good walloping  they should be getting. No longer will their rent be subsidised from the wallet of every other taxpayer. No more will their production be subsidised by restrictive practices imposed upon every producer.

Basically, we’ve the opportunity to do over the squirearchy just as we did in 1846. Not an opportunity we should allow to go to waste.

<a href="https://www.continentaltelegraph.com/2020/09/the-glorious-post-brexit-world-of-affordable-food/">SOURCE</a>  

The Problem With Whining About Processed Food

By

 Tim Worstall

 -

5

251

It is the latest assault on all this capitalist modernity, that processed food is bad for you. Instead we should all be eating stuff that has never seen the inside of a factory. Because, you know, Rousseau and eating the acorns that falleth upon the bonce.

One entrant into the tidal wave of whines:

Processed food ages your body and increases risk of a host of diseases
The University of Navarra in Spain studied 900 men and women, examined their diets and the sections of DNA which are a marker of age

This is to miss the point entirely. Not eating processed food may keep those telomeres nice and long but it will also make them nicely cool and immobile – food for the worms even.

Processed food ages the body as well as increasing the risk of a host of diseases, Spanish research suggests.
The study of 900 men and women, with an average age of 68, examined their diets, and the sections of DNA which are a marker of biological age.
Short telomeres indicate biological changes at a cellular level, and are associated with ageing.
Those who ate more convenience foods, and less fresh fare, were twice as likely to have short telomeres, the study found.
The research by the University of Navarra, presented at the International Conference on Obesity (ECOICO 2020) online, found that as consumption of “ultra processed” foods increased, the likelihood of having shortened telomeres rose dramatically.
Such foods include ready meals, processed meats and other convenience snacks and meals.

This is to miss the point entirely. Processing food is, largely enough, to preserve it. Bacon is a manner of having pork three weeks after one did away with the pig. Ketchup means tomatoes 6 months after the crop. A world without processed food is one in which eating comes in fits and starts – the gaps between often imposing crash diets unto the point of becoming worm food.

As has been pointed out before:

Telomeres aren’t important in their length in societies where 30 is a grand old age.

Oh, and to add to the capitalist free marketry wonders. It is, today as it was not before, possible for us to all eat fresh, not processed, food. Because we now have a vast global logistics chain which delivers fresh food to us all. When we each raise and kill our own pig we cannot live upon fresh pork. It’s only when we raise millions, then eat each some small fraction a day, that we can do without bacon and ham and preserved lard and salamai and smoked sausage and canned Spam and…..

It’s that very industrialised agriculture that allows us, if we should so wish, to stop using he preservation and processing methods of the old days. What cannot happen is local food, peasant supply systems, and fresh food all the time – why do you think our peasant forbears processed their food in the first place?

 

https://www.continentaltelegraph.com/2020/09/the-problem-with-whining-about-processed-food/

 

How dairy and fat could save your life

A new study confirms decades of research that saturated fats are good for your heart. So why do guidelines still push a non-fat diet?

You probably didn’t see that, a couple of weeks ago, a respected US scientific publication — the Journal Of the American College of Cardiology, no less — came out with a review of the literature saying there was no evidence that cutting saturated fats from your diet would help you live longer. And that eating more of the much-libelled lipids — found most abundantly in red meat and dairy — might help you avoid stroke.

That you didn’t read about it is no surprise. It is one in a long list of trials, studies, reviews and meta-analyses that have found similar results and gone the same way — sunk without trace, ignored by the people who create our dietary guidelines.

This issue was brought into focus last month when eye surgeon Dr James Muecke, 2020’s Australian of the Year, wrote in the Canberra Times: “A flawed dietary guideline, which we have obediently and blindly followed for 40 years, is literally killing us. We’ve been encouraged to eat less fat and consume more carbs and yet we’ve never been fatter, our teeth never more rotten, and type 2 diabetes and its complications never more prevalent.”

Federal Health Minister Greg Hunt responded with $2.5 million to review the guidelines which were last updated in 2013.

So what is Muecke talking about? Surely fat is bad, and saturated fat is worse.

The JACC paper listed some of the recent papers to contradict these dietary certainties. There was the PURE (Prospective Urban Rural Epidemiological) study of 135,000 people from 18 countries on five continents. It found that increased consumption of all types of fat (saturated, mono-unsaturated and polyunsaturated) was associated with lower risk of death and had a neutral association with CVD. By contrast, a diet high in carbohydrate was associated with higher risk of death. And those who ate the most saturated fat had lower risk of stroke, “consistent with the results from meta-analyses of previous cohort studies”. A newly-published study of 195,658 Brits over 10.6 years found “no evidence that saturated fat intake was associated with cardiovascular disease. In contrast, the substitution of polyunsaturated for saturated fat was associated with higher CVD risk.”

These are examples of epidemiology which can only prove associations, not causation. For that you need randomised trials, which are expensive and difficult. There have only ever been eight of them into the question of whether saturated fat will cause heart disease. The authors of the JACC paper looked at the six most recent systematic reviews and meta-analyses of those randomised trials. They wrote that the “results showed that replacing saturated fat with polyunsaturated fat has no significant effect on coronary outcomes or on total mortality.”

You might have also missed a fascinating story about the deaths of 63 middle-aged Sydney men in the early 1970s. It took place in the depths of a heart attack epidemic. Middle-aged men were dropping like flies, seemingly in their prime. It had peaked in 1968 when 55 per cent of all deaths in Australia were from heart disease (compared to around 27 per cent today).

The theory which had captured the debate was that saturated fats were clogging up their arteries like lard down a drainpipe. It had never been proven, but everyone thought it was probably true in the same way that most people still think it is.

Researchers at Sydney’s Prince Henry Hospital wanted to prove that by giving polyunsaturated fats instead of animal fats to a group of men who had just survived heart attacks they would lower their cholesterol and prolong their lives.

They gathered almost 500 heart attack survivors from across Sydney and gave half of them safflower oil and Miracle margarine — made from safflower oil — and advised them to cut down on animal fats. They gave the other half nothing. Just as expected, the men given the oil, margarine and advice lowered the cholesterol in their blood significantly more than the blokes still eating whatever men were eating in mid-70s Australia.

Unexpectedly, however, from the beginning, and over the five years of the study, the researchers saw that the margarine group were 50 per cent more likely to die than the butter, meat-and-three-veg group. The researchers looked for confounders like smoking, weight, age and exercise but found nothing that could make sense of these numbers. “At that time the clinical and biochemical knowledge did not allow us to interpret our results,” recalls Dr Boonseng Leelarthaepin, who was the PhD student who did all the work on the study.

Funding that had backed the study — from the Life Insurance Medical Research Fund of Australia and NZ — had dried up and they were under pressure to just finish it up, says Leelarthaepin. He denies recent suggestions the Marrickville Margarine company had put the financial squeeze on them owing to the way the results were heading.

“They were not a significant sponsor,” he said. When the study was published in 1978, it only including total mortality figures and not specific heart attack numbers. They figured that total mortality was a more important number than heart attack deaths, but not including heart attack numbers made it easier to ignore.

While they had proved that margarine and vegetable oils lowered cholesterol, the Sydney Diet Heart Study, like the concurrent London heart study, was seen as a failure because it had not proved the “lipid hypothesis” — that lowering cholesterol in a person’s bloodstream by lowering their saturated fat intake would prevent heart disease. But it didn’t matter because, even then, saturated fat had already been convicted in the court of scientific and popular opinion. The Sydney study became a mere confounding footnote in the literature.

Fast forward 30 years. Dr Chris Ramsden, a scientist with the US National Institutes of Health, was onto a theory that the reason why some studies have shown a benefit from cutting out animal fats for polyunsaturates —while others hadn’t — was because some polyunsaturated fats have Omega 3 in them. Of the eight randomised controlled studies that were done, five of them used oils that contained both omega 3s and omega 6s and they tended to show a small benefit to the study group — especially the ones where large amounts of omega 3 fish oils were used. So Ramsden needed to know what happened in the others. There was one small trial of 54 people using corn oil. Five of the corn oil group died compared to only one person in the group that got no dietary advice. While these numbers were stark, they were also very small. That’s where the Sydney study became crucial. There were no omega 3 oils in safflower oil or Miracle Margarine.

The published version of the study, however, was missing a lot of data, and had no information on heart disease deaths, only all-cause mortality. Ramsden needed more. He tried contacting the head researchers but they were all dead and their hospital was now a waterfront housing development. He found some helpful relatives who went rummaging through dusty boxes for him, but came up empty-handed. Then a year or so later, he found Dr Leelarthaepin on the internet. Leelarthaepin told Ramsden that the reason they hadn’t published the heart disease statistics was that the money had dried up and he needed to get it done.

 Statistics were difficult in those computer dark ages. Leelarthaepin went rummaging through his garage in the southern Sydney suburb of Matraville, through the detritus that accumulates over 30 years at the one house. And there it was, a 9-track tape from an IBM 360 computer which contained all the punch-card data.

Ramsden sent it off to California to be converted to modern computer language still not knowing what he might find, but when it came back it exceeded his expectations. He saw a well-organised study with cholesterol measured throughout, along with dietary surveys completed every four to six months so he knew what all the men were eating, and details of the 63 who died.

“One of the strengths of the Sydney Diet Heart Study is that they used seven-day food records both at baseline and at regular intervals throughout the trial for seven years,” Ramsden told me. “So on the tape that I was able to recover from Boonseng, they had PUFA (polyunsaturated fatty acid) intakes at each timepoint.”

Using modern statistical methods, Ramsden confirmed that polyunsaturated fats did lower cholesterol by an average of 13 per cent, but 17 per cent of those on the diet died, compared to only 11 per cent on butter and lard.

Crucially for Ramsden, when he crunched the heart disease death numbers, they stacked up at the same ratio as the all-cause mortality numbers.

One problem was that some of the subjects in the meat-and-three-vege control group took control of their own health and followed what was becoming standard medical advice — switching to vegetable oils and margarines. Thanks to the regular diet surveys that they filled in, Ramsden was able to determine that by doing so, they actually increased their chances of dying, “leading to an underestimation of the adverse effects of the intervention”.

The results fed into Ramsden’s broader review of the literature where he was able to conclude that cutting out saturated fat “showed no evidence of cardiovascular benefit. These findings could have important implications for worldwide dietary advice to substitute omega 6 linoleic acid, or polyunsaturated fats in general, for saturated fats.”

The US is in the process of updating its dietary guidelines, and judging by a preliminary paper released last week it will not be using the JACC paper. Nor will it use the Sydney Heart study or any of the randomised controlled studies on saturated fat. A spokesperson for Australia’s National Health and Medical Research Council said it was too early to say what studies would be considered in the Australian review. “Evidence found to meet the quality standards set by the review will be synthesised and translated into the Australian context and scrutinised through NHMRC’s rigorous guideline development processes. This includes ensuring that the development of any recommendations is based on the body of evidence and not determined by individual studies.”

The NHMRC will call for submissions in coming weeks, the spokesperson said.

For Dr Muecke it’s a straightforward equation. Fifty years of demonising fat has led to excessive consumption of sugar and refined carbohydrates, causing an explosion of type 2 diabetes and blindness. Diabetes is the leading cause of blindness in working age Australians. He has vowed to change the flawed dietary guidelines. “The JACC paper confirms there’s no link between natural dietary saturated fats and cardiovascular disease, which includes foods like full fat dairy, eggs, unprocessed meat and dark chocolate, which is nice. It’s a powerful study and should put the issue to bed forever.”

He points out that diabetes killed more than 5000 Australians during the first three months of COVID-19, during which time the virus killed 102.
https://www.theaustralian.com.au/science/full-fat-dairy-red-meat-and-dark-chocolate-are-good-for-you/news-story/4d7418770f1b417d2d485b8aafb0e1ea

Respiratory and atopic conditions in children two to four years after the 2014 Hazelwood coalmine fire

This is a very strange study.  It is about health effects of exposure to smoke pollution from one fire. But they had no baseline for a before and after study.  So they sought to get around that by correlating ESTIMATED monthly exposure to pollution with monthly reports of ill health.

But one would assume that almost all the pollution from the fire would have occurred WITHIN the first month.  How could there be ANY effect up to four years later?  It's a mystery. I have read and re-read the article several times but can make no sense of it

Abstract

Objective: To evaluate associations between exposure during early life to mine fire smoke and parent‐reported indicators of respiratory and atopic illness 2–4 years later.

Design, setting: The Hazelwood coalmine fire exposed a regional Australian community to markedly increased air pollution during February – March 2014. During June 2016 – October 2018 we conducted a prospective cohort study of children from the Latrobe Valley.

Participants: Seventy‐nine children exposed to smoke in utero, 81 exposed during early childhood (0–2 years of age), and 129 children conceived after the fire (ie, unexposed).

Exposure: Individualised mean daily and peak 24‐hour fire‐attributable fine particulate matter (PM2.5) exposure during the fire period, based on modelled air quality and time‐activity data.

Main outcome measures: Parent‐reported symptoms, medications use, and contacts with medical professionals, collected in monthly online diaries for 29 months, 2–4 years after the fire.

Results: In the in utero exposure analysis (2678 monthly diaries for 160 children exposed in utero or unexposed), each 10 μg/m3 increase in mean daily PM2.5 exposure was associated with increased reports of runny nose/cough (relative risk [RR], 1.09; 95% CI, 1.02–1.17), wheeze (RR, 1.56; 95% CI, 1.18–2.07), seeking health professional advice (RR, 1.17; 95% CI 1.06–1.29), and doctor diagnoses of upper respiratory tract infections, cold or flu (RR, 1.35; 95% CI, 1.14–1.60). Associations with peak 24‐hour PM2.5 exposure were similar. In the early childhood exposure analysis (3290 diaries for 210 children exposed during early childhood, or unexposed), each 100 μg/m3 increase in peak 24‐hour PM2.5 exposure was associated with increased use of asthma inhalers (RR, 1.26; 95% CI, 1.01–1.58).

Conclusions: Exposure to mine fire smoke in utero was associated with increased reports by parents of respiratory infections and wheeze in their children 2–4 years later.

Med J Aust doi: 10.5694/mja2.50719
Published online: 24 August 2020

Babies who are exposed to high levels of air pollution while in the womb have worse lung function as children and teenagers, study claims

Same old, same old crap.  Pollution and poverty confounded as a cause of poor health.

Pollution encountered was meaured by whether the person lived in a polluted area.  But pollution is not uniform in an area.  And poor people tend to live in more polluted areas.  And poor people tend to have poorer health. So was it pollution or poverty that caused the poorer health?  Unknowable.

The article is only a conference paper so details of the research are not publically available and hence are not open for critical examination.  But by relying on previous studies of that ilk we can be pretty certain that income was not controlled for and that the effects found were minute

Tedious.  Let's hope it does not get past peer review


Babies who are exposed to high air pollution develop worse lung function as children and teenagers, research suggests.

A study of 915 children found that the higher the levels of air pollution they were exposed to in infancy, the worse their lung function became as they grew into adolescence.

Researchers in Germany measured the infants' air pollution exposure and then repeatedly assessed their breathing, carrying out tests at the ages of six, ten and 15.

The team, who presented their findings at the European Respiratory Society International Congress, found an even bigger impact on lung function in children who developed asthma.

But they also found that babies who were breastfed for at least the first 12 weeks of their life were given some degree of protection.

SOURCE

The old BPA nonsense again

Using extreme tertiles for the analysis suggests that there was no overall connection between BPA and anything else.  And even after throwing away a third of their data, the correlations were trivial,  too low to be a basis for public policy

Association Between Bisphenol A Exposure and Risk of All-Cause and Cause-Specific Mortality in US Adults

Wei Bao et al.

Abstract

Importance:  Bisphenol A (BPA) is a major public health concern because of its high-volume industrial production, ubiquitous exposure to humans, and potential toxic effects on multiple organs and systems in humans. However, prospective studies regarding the association of BPA exposure with long-term health outcomes are sparse.

Objective:  To examine the association of BPA exposure with all-cause mortality and cause-specific mortality among adults in the United States.

Design, Setting, and Participants:  This nationally representative cohort study included 3883 adults aged 20 years or older who participated in the US National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey 2003-2008 and provided urine samples for BPA level measurements. Participants were linked to mortality data from survey date through December 31, 2015. Data analyses were conducted in July 2019.

Exposures:  Urinary BPA levels were quantified using online solid-phase extraction coupled to high-performance liquid chromatography–isotope dilution tandem mass spectrometry.

Main Outcomes and Measures:  Mortality from all causes, cardiovascular disease, and cancer.

Results:  This cohort study included 3883 adults aged 20 years or older (weighted mean [SE] age, 43.6 [0.3] years; 2032 women [weighted, 51.4%]). During 36 514 person-years of follow-up (median, 9.6 years; maximum, 13.1 years), 344 deaths occurred, including 71 deaths from cardiovascular disease and 75 deaths from cancer. Participants with higher urinary BPA levels were at higher risk for death. After adjustment for age, sex, race/ethnicity, socioeconomic status, dietary and lifestyle factors, body mass index, and urinary creatinine levels, the hazard ratio comparing the highest vs lowest tertile of urinary BPA levels was 1.49 (95% CI, 1.01-2.19) for all-cause mortality, 1.46 (95% CI, 0.67-3.15) for cardiovascular disease mortality, and 0.98 (95% CI, 0.40-2.39) for cancer mortality.

Conclusions and Relevance:  In this nationally representative cohort of US adults, higher BPA exposure was significantly associated with an increased risk of all-cause mortality. Further studies are needed to replicate these findings in other populations and determine the underlying mechanisms.

SOURCE

Does losing weight increase your lifespan?

Most studies show little effect of fat on life expectancy but the one below seems to.  So what is going on?  Easy.  There WAS  in fact a benefit from weight loss but it was very small. Which is what previous studies have shown

Association of Weight Loss Between Early Adulthood and Midlife With All-Cause Mortality Risk in the US

Wubin Xie et al.

Abstract

Importance:  Describing potential mortality risk reduction associated with weight loss between early adulthood and midlife is important for informing primary and secondary prevention efforts for obesity.

Objective:  To examine the risk of all-cause mortality among adults who lost weight between early adulthood and midlife compared with adults who were persistently obese over the same period.

Design, Setting, and Participants:  Combined repeated cross-sectional analysis was conducted using data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey III (1988-1994) and continuous waves collected in 2-year cycles between 1999 and 2014. The data analysis was conducted from February 10, 2019, to April 20, 2020. Individuals aged 40 to 74 years at the time of survey (baseline) were included in the analyses (n = 24 205).

Exposures:  Weight history was assessed by self-reported weight at age 25 years, at 10 years before baseline (midlife: mean age, 44 years; interquartile range, 37-55), and measured weight at baseline. Body mass index (BMI) (calculated as weight in kilograms divided by height in meters squared) at each time was categorized as normal (18.5-24.9), overweight (25.0-29.9), and obese (≥30.0). Weight change patterns were assessed from age 25 years (early adulthood) to 10 years before baseline (midlife).

Main Outcomes and Measures:  Incident all-cause mortality using linked data from the National Death Index.

Results:  Of the 24 205 participants, 11 617 were women (49.0%) and 11 567 were non-Hispanic White (76.9%). The mean (SD) BMI was 29.0 (6.1) at baseline. During a mean (SD) follow-up of 10.7 (7.2) years, 5846 deaths occurred. Weight loss from obese to overweight was associated with a 54% (hazard ratio, 0.46; 95% CI, 0.27-0.77) reduction in mortality risk compared with individuals with stable obesity between early adulthood and midlife. An estimated 3.2% (95% CI, 1.6%-4.9%) of early deaths could have been avoided if those who maintained an obese BMI instead lost weight to an overweight BMI by midlife. Overall, an estimated 12.4% (95% CI, 8.1%-16.5%) of early deaths may be attributable to having weight in excess of the normal BMI range at any point between early and mid-adulthood.

Conclusions and Relevance:  In this study, weight loss from obesity to overweight between early adulthood through midlife appeared to be associated with a mortality risk reduction compared with persistent obesity.

SOURCE 

Vitamin D no good for depression

Effect of Long-term Vitamin D3 Supplementation vs Placebo on Risk of Depression or Clinically Relevant Depressive Symptoms and on Change in Mood Scores

Olivia I. Okereke et al.

Abstract

Importance:  Low levels of 25-hydroxyvitamin D have been associated with higher risk for depression later in life, but there have been few long-term, high-dose large-scale trials.

Objective:  To test the effects of vitamin D3 supplementation on late-life depression risk and mood scores.

Design, Setting, and Participants:  There were 18 353 men and women aged 50 years or older in the VITAL-DEP (Vitamin D and Omega-3 Trial-Depression Endpoint Prevention) ancillary study to VITAL, a randomized clinical trial of cardiovascular disease and cancer prevention among 25 871 adults in the US. There were 16 657 at risk for incident depression (ie, no depression history) and 1696 at risk for recurrent depression (ie, depression history but no treatment for depression within the past 2 years). Randomization occurred from November 2011 through March 2014; randomized treatment ended on December 31, 2017, and this was the final date of follow-up.

Intervention:  Randomized assignment in a 2 × 2 factorial design to vitamin D3 (2000 IU/d of cholecalciferol) and fish oil or placebo; 9181 were randomized to vitamin D3 and 9172 were randomized to matching placebo.

Main Outcomes and Measures:  The primary outcomes were the risk of depression or clinically relevant depressive symptoms (total of incident and recurrent cases) and the mean difference in mood scores (8-item Patient Health Questionnaire depression scale [PHQ-8]; score range, 0 points [least symptoms] to 24 points [most symptoms]; the minimal clinically important difference for change in scores was 0.5 points).

Results:  Among the 18 353 randomized participants (mean age, 67.5 [SD, 7.1] years; 49.2% women), the median treatment duration was 5.3 years and 90.5% completed the trial (93.5% among those alive at the end of the trial). Risk of depression or clinically relevant depressive symptoms was not significantly different between the vitamin D3 group (609 depression or clinically relevant depressive symptom events; 12.9/1000 person-years) and the placebo group (625 depression or clinically relevant depressive symptom events; 13.3/1000 person-years) (hazard ratio, 0.97 [95% CI, 0.87 to 1.09]; P = .62); there were no significant differences between groups in depression incidence or recurrence. No significant differences were observed between treatment groups for change in mood scores over time; mean change in PHQ-8 score was not significantly different from zero (mean difference for change in mood scores, 0.01 points [95% CI, −0.04 to 0.05 points]).

Conclusions and Relevance:  Among adults aged 50 years or older without clinically relevant depressive symptoms at baseline, treatment with vitamin D3 compared with placebo did not result in a statistically significant difference in the incidence and recurrence of depression or clinically relevant depressive symptoms or for change in mood scores over a median follow-up of 5.3 years. These findings do not support the use of vitamin D3 in adults to prevent depression.

SOURCE

Ya gotta be joking

Leftists are determined to believe anything that suits their Leftist idology.  The research below is about Mrs Obama's school lunch program.  The academic article seriously tells us that the kids indeed got improved food from it -- improved according to the conventional wisdom at the time.

What it fails to consider is what the kids actually ate.  That the kids turned up their noses at a lot of it and threw it in the bin is not mentioned.  They assume that the kids ate what they said they ate.

What idiocy.  What a kid should eat is often a contested matter between parent and child so the kids would all be pretty aware of what they needed to say in order to get approval.  So the amount they threw in the bin would not be mentioned to a nosy stranger. They would say they ate it


Association of the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act With Dietary Quality Among Children in the US National School Lunch Program

Kelsey Kinderknecht et al.

Abstract

Importance:  The Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010, implemented nationwide in 2012, was intended to improve the nutritional quality of meals served in the National School Lunch Program (NSLP).

Objective:  To assess whether there was an association between the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010 and dietary quality of lunch for students participating in the NSLP, stratified by income.

Design, Setting, Participants:  Serial cross-sectional study design, using National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) data from 2007-2008, 2009-2010, 2013-2014, and 2015-2016, of students who were surveyed in the NHANES and were attending schools participating in the NSLP. Individuals who were aged 5 to 18 years, in kindergarten through 12th grade, enrolled in a school that served school lunch, and had a reliable weekday dietary recall were included.

Exposures:  The Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010 (prepolicy period: 2007-2010; postpolicy period: 2013-2016), with participation in the NSLP estimated based on an algorithm.

Main Outcomes and Measures:  The primary outcome was dietary quality of intake for lunch, measured by the Healthy Eating Index-2010 (HEI-2010) score (range, 0-100; 0 indicates a diet with no adherence to the 2010 Dietary Guidelines for Americans and 100 indicates a diet with complete adherence to the guidelines).

Results:  Among 6389 students included in the surveys (mean age, 11.7 [95% CI, 11.6-11.9] years; 3145 [50%] female students; 1880 [56%] were non-Hispanic white), 32% were low-income, 12% were low-middle–income, and 56% were middle-high–income students. A total of 2472 (39%) were participants in the NSLP. Among low-income students, the adjusted mean prepolicy HEI-2010 score was 42.7 and the postpolicy score was 54.6 among NSLP participants and the adjusted mean prepolicy score was 34.8 and postpolicy score was 34.1 among NSLP nonparticipants (difference in differences, 12.6 [95% CI, 8.9-16.3]). Among low-middle–income students, the adjusted mean prepolicy HEI-2010 score was 40.4 and postpolicy score was 54.8 among NSLP participants and the adjusted mean prepolicy score was 34.2 and postpolicy score was 36.1 among NSLP nonparticipants (difference in differences, 12.4 [95% CI, 4.9-19.9]). Among middle-high–income students, the adjusted mean HEI-2010 prepolicy score was 42.7 and postpolicy score 55.5 for NSLP participants and the adjusted mean prepolicy score was 38.9 and prepolicy score was 43.6 for NSLP nonparticipants (difference in differences, 8.1 [95% CI, 4.2-12.0]).

Conclusions and Relevance:  In a serial cross-sectional study of students, the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010 was associated with better changes in dietary quality for lunch among presumed low-income, low-middle–income, and middle-high–income participants in the NSLP compared with nonparticipants.

SOURCE 

Alcohol is good for your brain

This is such a fun finding I could not resist putting it up. It's from a major medical journal so carries some weight. The effects were very slight but in a good direction from my point of view.

Sad to say, there were no controls for demographics mentioned so the finding could be wholly artifactual. The drinkers could for instance have been slightly richer on average -- and we know that rich people tend to have better health and higher IQs

Association of Low to Moderate Alcohol Drinking With Cognitive Functions From Middle to Older Age Among US Adults

Ruiyuan Zhang et al.

Abstract

Objective:  To investigate whether associations exist between low to moderate alcohol drinking and cognitive function trajectories or rates of change in cognitive function from middle age to older age among US adults.

Design, Setting, and Participants:  A prospective cohort study of participants drawn from the Health and Retirement Study (HRS), a nationally representative sample of US adults, with mean (SD) follow-up of 9.1 (3.1) years. In total, 19 887 participants who had their cognitive functions measured in the HRS starting in 1996 through 2008 and who had participated in at least 3 biennial surveys were included. The data analysis was conducted from June to November 2019.

Exposures:  Alcohol consumption and aging.

Main Outcomes and Measures:  Trajectories and annual rates of change for the cognitive domains of mental status, word recall, and vocabulary and for the total cognitive score, which was the sum of the mental status and word recall scores. Participants were clustered into 2 cognitive function trajectories for each cognition measure assessed based on their scores at baseline and through at least 3 biennial surveys: a consistently low trajectory (representing low cognitive scores throughout the study period) and a consistently high trajectory (representing high cognitive scores throughout the study period).

Results: The mean (SD) age of 19 887 participants was 61.8 (10.2) years, and the majority of the HRS participants were women (11 943 [60.1%]) and of white race/ethnicity (16 950 [85.2%]). Low to moderate drinking (<8 drinks per week for women and <15 drinks per week for men) was significantly associated with a consistently high cognitive function trajectory and a lower rate of cognitive decline. Compared with never drinkers, low to moderate drinkers were less likely to have a consistently low trajectory for total cognitive function (odds ratio [OR], 0.66; 95% CI, 0.59-0.74), mental status (OR, 0.71; 95% CI, 0.63-0.81), word recall (OR, 0.74; 95% CI, 0.69-0.80), and vocabulary (OR, 0.64; 95% CI, 0.56-0.74) (all P < .001). In addition, low to moderate drinking was associated with decreased annual rates of total cognitive function decline (β coefficient, 0.04; 95% CI, 0.02-0.07; P = .002), mental status (β coefficient, 0.02; 95% CI, 0.01-0.03; P = .002), word recall (β coefficient, 0.02; 95% CI, 0.01-0.04; P = .01), and vocabulary (β coefficient, 0.01; 95% CI, 0.00-0.03; P = .08). A significant racial/ethnic difference was observed for trajectories of mental status (P = .02 for interaction), in which low to moderate drinking was associated with lower odds of having a consistently low trajectory for white participants (OR, 0.65; 95% CI, 0.56-0.75) but not for black participants (OR, 1.02; 95% CI, 0.74-1.39). Finally, the dosage of alcohol consumed had a U-shaped association with all cognitive function domains for all participants, with an optimal dose of 10 to 14 drinks per week.

Conclusions and relevance:  These findings suggested that low to moderate alcohol drinking was associated with better global cognition scores, and these associations appeared stronger for white participants than for black participants. Studies examining the mechanisms underlying the association between alcohol drinking and cognition in middle-aged or older adults are needed.

SOURCE